Edmond R Gray
On assessing the cost of changing the World Bank, Wolfensohn determined that it will take $250 million to strategically reform the organization within a thirty-month period, Goldman (2005). In discussing organizational change, Burke (2008) stated that there is the need to identify a reason for change along with a new and ideal vision for the organization, as well as the difficulties that may take place during the change. Hence, apply the change and determine whether such change will be effected using a top down or bottom up approach. According to Weaver and Leiteritz (2005, para. 3), the need to reform the World Bank was repeatedly made at various monetary and financial summits held at the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Thus, Wolfensohn's change was a self-worded "two-tier renewal" plan targeted at restoring the image of the institution as the leading global development agency. This new transformation is in consonance with the bank's initial mission of reducing global poverty through the promotion of economic growth. Failures of the bank have been traced to its principal organizational culture, the organ that governs the expectations and attitudes of the staff in line with the organization's external partners.
The two-tier change that Wolfensohn put in place included-individual and organizational, is based on the pretext that leadership was lagging at the management level, and that their clients, especially poorer nations that were to benefit from a system that will help them alleviate poverty, were struggling to repay those badly structured loans that were extended to them, by the World Bank. And according to Burke (2008, p. 84), changes at the individual level are structured and executed to assist an organization make the necessary move in its new direction. Under Wolfensohn, the established goal was tied to the United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MGD), aimed to alleviate global poverty.
As stated earlier, the organizational culture of the bank is impacting its overall growth, by limiting the level to which leaders are able to formally address the individual and institutional changes that are required to meaningfully invoke sustainable organizational change, Trehan (2009). But, Weaver and Leiteritz (2005) argued that where the goals of reorganization are in line with the present culture of the organization, the result has somewhat proven successful. Similarly, in cases where the restructuring efforts require radical changes in the work cultures and standardized routines of the bank, a stronger resistance has been put up by employees, up the point where the change effort failed.
Regardless the outcome, Weaver and Leiteritz (2002, p. 370) stated that a better understanding of the complex changes needed to transform international organizations, should not only tackle the deep seated factors that provoked the change, but include the
significant inner dynamics that shape the implementation of strategic reform and its final results. The reform of the World Bank thus presents a attractive abstract dilemma for scholars. According to Goldman (2005), the Wolfensohn reform effort improved its international standings, but the effort to change the culture of the organization from within, is an ongoing.
References
Burke, W., (2008). Organization Change Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Goldman, Michael. Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization. New York: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 93–97.
History of the World Bank Group (WBG, 2010). Retrieved from http://www.worldbankgroup.org/
